And then the ampersand ...

Here’s a quickie: The ampersand is credited to Cicero’s secretary Tiro and developed as a ligature out of the letter “e” and “t” in the Latin word et, meaning “and.” And Wikipedia says this about the word itself:
“The word ampersand is a corruption of the phrase ‘and per se and,’ meaning ‘and [the symbol which] by itself [is] and.’”